Science finally comes through

Well I saw a commercial touting the 'healthy' goodness of Mayonnaise. That's right I had been waiting for science to say that Mayo was good for you, but I never thought it would happen. Apparently mayo has Omega-3 fatty acid. I'm not sure what it does, but I always new there was something good in there. I guess it can lower triglyceride count and lower your blood pressure, which makes sense because I don't eat all that healthy and my b.p. is like 120's over 80's. I haven't had my cholesterol checked in a while, but it was good the last time. The only bad thing is that if you have Congestive heart failure omega-3 turns out to be a bad thing. It can keep the electric signals around your heart down and when you have the congestive heart failure that can be bad since you don't have that many cells firing already. Just in case any body out there has that condition. So now all we have to do is wait for science to say it is bad for you, so eat as much as you can while it is still good for you, I know I will.

The Fantasy Draft

We'll I didn't get the guy I wanted, but I must not have picked 1st, I did get Albert Pujols. On the front page of Yahoo fantasy sports though, there is an article saying 'Take a chance on Pujols elbow or give somebody from K.C. a shot.' So that is basically it, you can pretty much track who is on my team because they will either get hurt or suspended. I dropped Melky Cabrera who was set to serve a 3-game suspension at the beginning of the season, but since I dropped him that will probably get appealed. Then the other guy I wanted- B.J. Upton - gets beaned with a baseball in his arm on draft night and can't hold a bat. That's encouraging. I figure he got hit about 5 milliseconds after I drafted him. Anyway Stevie was already trying to make a deal with me to get Carlos Pena for Todd Helton and some catcher on the D-Backs. I looked up the stats on MLB '08 the show and there projected spots in the line-up and then shot him down. So basically Pena will probably get hurt and Helton and that catcher will have all-star years. Right now I figure if my catcher doesn't do very good I could just pick up another one, since he is pretty far down on the list. I don't know much about fantasy sports, but I figure I'm in for it.

A Week of Drafts

Well we're pirates now. Sampson got drafted by the Pirates on Sunday, so that is who we will be playing T-ball for. It was pretty simple, you just go and set there, they read the names of the 6 year-olds already on a team and then you go and sign up for a team. Sampson's little friend from down the street was there and his mom said he was going to play on the pirates since she knew the coach, so that is where Sampson wanted to play too. We start practice in April, but it is just an instructional league so they don't really keep score, they must just let the kids play and then after everyone gets a turn they switch places. I guess we'll find out.

MLB 08 - The Show

I got 'MLB 08 The Show' this week and so far the addictive factor is about an 8 out of 10. I got the game because it had more favorable reviews versus the other baseball game for PS3 (I can't remember the other game). Anyway the things I like are the jukebox feature where you can take songs that are on the PS3 hard drive and incorporate them into the game. So if you don't like the music on the game you can change it. The graphics are great and the pitching is good. The rookie mode is useless in my opinion, it is completely different from the veteran mode. In veteran mode you can try and guess the pitch and location and if you do the screen lights up and you can load up and try a heavy swing. The only thing I don't like is the field and base running controls. The game has a habit of not switching to nearest fielder and you have to make a split decision and recognize who you are controlling and whether you need to switch and then whether you need to dive or jump for the ball. Running the bases is no easier. For some reason the controls seem really unintuitive for me, although I played Sampson a game and he hit four home runs. He didn't win though, I couldn't let that happen. But when you run the bases you have to point to the base where the base runner is starting from and then you have to tell them which base to go to. There is an advance all runners and send all runners back control with one button, but when you want to send the guy from third home and leave the other guy at second you have to really think about it. I would have been simpler if you could just point at the runner and either advance or return, I mean come one we had the controls with the old Nintendo remember, all we had then was the 'A' and 'B' buttons and those controls were fine. Anyway the ballparks are awesome and they seem to have done a good job on scouting pitchers for the capabilities, it just seems like no matter what I throw the computer will foul it off. The computer gives you a pitch to throw, but you are better off knowing what your pitches strengths are, throwing that 1-2 fastball with Paul Byrd is not his strength. Overall I give it a 7 out of 10. Once I figure it out it will probably be one of those forgettable games. Oh well. Maybe 'Resistance fall of man' will come down in price since it has been out for over 14 MONTHS. I have never seen a game hold that kind of price since its original release.

A truely Blessed Week

Usually people here about the bad things that happen and rarely the good things. Well we had a really good week and I hope it continues. I have chronicled the recent downturn we experienced with deaths, but when the Lord taketh away he often giveth back, which is what we were on the receiving end of this week. The old triple C came through for a very good week, then Sophie was on the phone with Discover and when she paid the bill last month it was one day late (because of you know everything that was going on) and we got hit with a finance charge, but since Sophie had never had a late payment in 12 years and our extenuating circumstances the lady took the charge off, so there was an extra 40 bucks back. Then I won the monthly safety drawing, the first time I had won in 22 months. We got our state income tax back, and yesterday when we were at WAL*MART the guy who was going to rotate our tire said that the tires looked good and the ones that were on the front were actually a little bit better so we didn't need to rotate them and he saved us $6 bucks. Also Sophie and I actually got to go out just the two of us and have a meal together sans children. Oh and I got a new game for the PlayStation (I will blog about this separately). Anyway, thanks God!!

Milestone - 1,000 views

Well the old blog has reached a milestone of 1,000 page views. Thanks everybody, hope you've enjoyed it. And in just a shade under a year too. Also the old AdSense has come in for a tidy little profit of $5.44, and since I have re-upped with AdSense hopefully the ads will be back for your clicking pleasure.

New Element

I am going to start updating the old blog description at the top of the page a little more frequently, but if you miss one I will keep an archive of the old descriptions over there at the left... near the bottom... keep on going ... way way down there.

Beowulf: the Movie - A Review

This movie wasn't bad, but it caught me off gaurd that it was all digital animation or as they say 'digitally enhaced'. It had the same stuff as Polar Express, but I don't think the technology is quite there for a feature film that doesn't appeal to kids, at least not to be profitable. My brother in-law Hans went to the theater to see it in 3-D and there are definetly some parts that would have been cool in the theater in 3-D, but when you are watching at home it kind of loses some of the effect. Not all, but some. You still sit there like, 'Whoa, that was cool,' but a couple of cool shots don't make a movie. The digital stuff loses too much effect up close, but it does allow for some great actors AKA Anthony Hopkins to step into a role easierly (check that word out), but what you pick up in having his facial features and overall ability you lose, by not having the full body interaction. The story wasn't bad, but after watching it was no more out of the range to do in a traditional manner than say Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter. It is pretty much your old stand by story of Boy kills monster, boy hooks up with evil monster mom, then boy has to kill his own demon offspring who turns into a dragon, pretty standard really. If you have the capability to see this movie for free I would recomend it, otherwise view at your own discretion. I say 3 out of 5, Sophie says 2.5 out of 5.

WWVA Question

I was listening to WWVA the other morning and they were doing a call in thing for listeners to call in with the answer to a question. The question was 'How many times a day does a normal man fart?' The correct answer was 13. I said the normal amount for a 5 year-old male is about 40 times and the normal amount for a two year old female is about 75 times, these figures are based on independent research. For a 30 year old female the average is 0, women don't fart they only fart in the bathroom where you are supposed to fart you disgusting pigs. That is also based on independent research.

Ice Truckers and Diamonds

So Sophie and the kids and I are pretty much snowed in today, and we are watching Ice Road Truckers on the history channel. The premise of the show is that the truckers drive across frozen lakes during the cold weather in Northern Canada to deliver supplies to the diamond mines up there. It looks like it would be crazy to do and also very cold. Sophie said she wondered if the people that work in the mine take a little bit for the themselves. She said she thought the best way would be to shove the diamonds up your nose to make it out of the security checks. She said the kids would be good at getting it out since they act like they are digging gold out most of the time, diamonds wouldn't be that big of a change. I said if you developed a little capsule that wouldn't dissolve in your digestive system you could fill it with diamonds and then just dig it out when you know... you go to the bathroom. Just make sure you don't go at work!!!

Forgetting What Bush Did

Lots of people have bad mouthed President Bush during his tenure and sometimes rightfully so. But the criticism he gets for NAFTA and the local manufacturing industry isn't so well deserved. People seem to forget that he signed the steel tariffs in 2001 or so and that is one of the reasons that Wheeling Pittsburgh Steel is still around. Sure it took a lot of other things to happen to keep that company around, but I guarantee that if the steel tariffs had not been put in place those facilities would have been shut down over 5 years ago. I remember being in some of the salary meetings with then CEO James Bradley and he was telling us just how close the Company had been to idling the plants. You know that is the other thing I don't understand about people's criticism of companies. They say the large corporations need to be taxed more, but these companies employ people and create a lot of jobs. So what if they can make a decent profit, at least then there is a chance that money can be shared with the employees that made it or used to improve the facilities to keep them running for a longer period. If the government takes the money it will go to people that don't work or are illegal or something, but it definitely won't come back to the workers.

Nippert gets Nipped

So much for the blog bump. Hillary won Ohio and Texas on Tuesday. But the real winner was the republican party. Now the democratic race will likely continue until the convention. In the mean time they may have a redo in Michigan and Florida where Hill won the first time, but because the DNC dissallowed their delegates, they don't actually count towards her total. It will be interesting to see what happens now, because the Clintons have really been in attack mode, and that is always kind of off-putting the longer an election lasts. If McCain can pick a conservative V.P. it may bring some more people to his cause and really may swing the general election in his favor regardless of what the democrates settle on.

Visit from the Tooth Fairy

Apparently the tooth fairy visited last night and left Sampson $2, again. But this time Sampson had open up the plastic bag that the tooth was in and when the tooth fairy went to grab the bag the tooth fell out on the floor. Then the tooth fairy had to spend a half an hour looking for the tooth in the dark with the tooth fairy's book light.

Note: I thought this story was hilarious, but the tooth fairy didn't seem to think it was very funny since it happened at about 1 in the A.M.

Rendition: a Review

This movie was terrible. It had one thing going for it and that was at the end of the movie you found out you weren't watching what you thought you were. There were basically two different time lines and you don't find out till the end. I don't want to ruin it, but oh what the hey if you really want to see it don't read the next part. The boy and girl that hook up at the beginning are actually the explosion, but you don't realize that until the end when they show that they were the ones getting blown up. It is kind of like deja vu when you watch the scene and your like 'hey this already happened' and then your like 'what the hell just happened'. Anyway I didn't like it because the main character is a Chemical Engineer that gets kidnapped by the federal government because they think he is a terrorist and it is all done under the law of rendition. Thus the name of the movie. The other thing I didn't like was the guy was making $200,000 a year. And he went to NYU. It was like they didn't even try to do any research on salaries that make sense for as vague of a job as he did. They might as well of said he made a gillion dollars. Also Reece Witherspoon is in it and she is "pregnant" except it looks like she is pregnant with a half deflated soccer ball. It looked like this whole movie cost about $200,000 to make. There was one big explosion and they milked it for more than it was worth. You saw the same explosion 3 separate times in the movie. So the final tally is : One crappy explosion (shown 3 times), a ton of subtitles, one ChemE that makes a gillion dollars, and Reece Witherspoon giving birth to a soccer ball. That equals one out of 5.

T-Balling

Sampson is signed up for the old T-ball, wanna know how I know, there is $40 worth of chocolate sitting on the counter to sell. You know I was a bit of ball player back in the day. I once pitched a 1/3 of an inning in reserve ball, so that basically qualifies me to coach and stuff. Or at least I could go around and pick up the bats after the kids get done and make sure there aren't any big rocks in the base path. Yeah, that's probably what I'll be doing.

Another one bites the dust

Sampson lost his second tooth today. That means another visit from the tooth fairy. Yeah (sarcasm). Last time she left $2. I think I used to get 50 cents. And no not the rapper.

The Fantasy Starts Here

Well Stevie talked me into playing fantasy baseball this year. I have held out as long as I could before playing any fantasy games, because I don't want to become addicted. I will chronicle my progress throughout the season. I have a funny feeling they could probably just go ahead and divide up my money now. Of course if they want to come and check out the old blog they could always click on one of the adds to give me a little cash, then we could all win. Wait that is starting to sound like a fantasy, oh well let the games begin!

Random Thought #1

I hate that show 'Everbody loves Raymond'.

The Webkinz addiction

I can't quit playing that stupid Webkinz. It is addicting with all the gem hunting and going to the academy, working and playing at the arcade. I am stuck on Goober's Lab and Goober's Atomicolicious. That's right it's chemtastic. Oh and Sampson plays too. But so does Sophie. She says she is about to kick the habit though, we'll see. All she does is talk about getting a new one.

Two More go Belly up

Well we lost our replacement fish this week. The two fish we bought to replace Goldie died this week. Little Princess (Peach's fish) and Goldie II (Sampson's fish). Something about when we buy fish we can't seem to keep them alive. I remember when I bought Sophie a Beta fish that could live in a vase with a plant and you didn't have to feed it or anything, it lived off the plant and the plant lived off the fish waste. Seemed pretty simple. That fish lasted a week. Then we got another one, since it died in less than a week. The next one lasted 10 days or so, and I think it committed fish-icide. That is when a fish commits suicide by getting stuck in the root of the plant. I don't know maybe it's us, maybe we drive the fish to it. Oh well, maybe we need to try a land animal, then again....

The Cecil Blog Bump

After my endorsement of Donnie Nippert for Sheriff in Belmont county, I heard one of the local radio hosts also throw his endorsement Donnie's way. I can only figure that after my blog some of the other local talent wanted to hop on the bandwagon after the enormous boost given to the campaign after my endorsement. This is called the Cecil Blog Bump. David Bloomquist will probably get more of the credit if Donnie goes on to win, but I'm OK with that. It is kind of like the guy who stepped on the moon first and said, 'yeah, it looks safe Neil come on out.' Actually that may not be a good analogy.

Game Night

We have been playing different games for people's birthdays, and one of the crowd favorites is Balderdash. So far the best answer I have come up with combined several answers. I think the category was Movies and the name of the movie was "the Pickle". You have to come up with an idea of what was covered in the movie and my answer was as follows: Two hikers get stuck under a foumart covered in furuncle.
This was funny because foumart was a word we had to make up definitions for and I said it was a rock that was so heavy it required two or more people to move. Then I said Furuncle was another name for the moss that grows on the north side of trees. I don't remember what either of the real definitions were, but from now on this blog will refer to words by my given definition.

Continued downward spiral

Well it looks like the downward spiral of the Steel-towners is picking up steam. This past week one of their former annoucers, Myron Cope, died. In the last six months two of the biggest Steel-er fan I know passed away and then Myron Cope, the guy who invented the terrible towel passed away. The let Alan Faneca leave via free agency, meanwhile not signing anyone themselves and they really aren't in a postion to get a high impact player in the draft. They are one terrible draft away from falling apart. I will continue to monitor the situaiton from a distance.

In a side conversation I had with someone at work, he said the 'terrible towel' was actually invented by Myron Cope's mentally handicapped son. Which means the train is just rocketing down.

Tony Wrecks :-(

Tony Wrecked on Saturday and then wrecked again on Sunday. Needless to say it was not a good weekend in Las Vegas. He looked pretty shook up when the talked to him. He didn't even bash Goodyear for the crappy hard tire they made for that track. Then Jeffy wrecked later, and it was Junior's fault. Well Hendrick, how do you feel about letting Kyle Busch go now, since he is setting third in points and you don't even have a driver sniffing the top ten. And it seems like every week you have at least one of your drivers wreck one of your other drivers.